


the way you want it

by everlit (Ink)



Series: How You Survived the War [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath, Arguing, F/M, Post-Sburb, how you survived the war, love is not enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink/pseuds/everlit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wind’s blowing through her hair and her too-big clothes; she’s skin-and-bones, edges and angles, and she stands on that rock like she owns it and all the earth beneath. “I know you,” she says. She smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way you want it

At some point, the trees and grass and weeds fall away, and there's nothing but rock all the way down to the shore. Karkat climbs his way down the hillside slowly, clinging to anything that might superficially resemble a handhold. It's a long way down. She must have wanted to get away really badly.

The beach isn't attractive, not by troll or human standards--it's kind of pathetic-looking, actually, as much stone as sand, the water green with algae, the plants gray with god-knows what. Maybe they're naturally like that. It's probably Lalonde's fault: if she was here she'd call it a metaphor for the despair in humanoid consciousness. Everything's so dull that Terezi practically blends in with it, her thin body tucked in among the rocks, a couple shades lighter and bluer than them. The sea recedes from her, leaving her hair spread out against the sand.

Terezi is small for her age--smaller than him, even--and so skinny that sometimes it looks like the slightest pressure could break her. (Karkat pities whatever poor idiot actually believes that.) He'd known this--they'd fought together all during Sgrub, and by this point he knew every angle of her body, all of her motions and the heft and weight of her--but he's never given her size more than a passing thought. Somehow it feels like he's seeing her for the first time.

She holds herself very still, and that he's not used to; Terezi is a force of nature, an mover and a shaker, laughing into the wind. It's like he's looking at her suspended within a single moment, and as he approaches her he feels slower, stiller, as though time was grinding to a halt for him too.

Then Terezi turns her head towards him. "Go away, Karkat," she says.

Of course. Of course she doesn't want to see him.

He doesn't move--trying to find the right word, think of the right thing to say, the thing that will bring the two of them back to the way they were, for at least a moment--and Terezi schools her features into a scowl. "Well?" she snaps. "You aren't leaving."

He folds his arms across his chest. "I told you to stay within sight of camp, Terezi. Do you think I give orders just for shits and giggles?"

If there was a right thing to say--and he's not sure there is one--that sure as hell wasn't it.

She rolls over, so that her back is to him. "No. You give orders because your pitiful little ego can't handle the idea that you aren't always right."

He looks at her, fists clenched at his sides--he looks at her, and she stays hunched away from him, although the spray must be getting in her face. "We're going back to camp," he bites out, throws the words at her. "Get up. It's not a fucking suggestion."

"No." She doesn't move. "Leave me alone, Karkat."

He kicks the sand. "You're doing this just to piss me off, aren't you?"

"Believe it or not, not everything everyone does is about you." She says it calm and superior and assured, like she’s already read him all the way down and decided he isn’t worth the bother. Well, fuck that.

"Like fuck." He glares at the ground. "You're always doing this, your little games and your fucking dodges. You just--you just fucking love making me mad, don't you? I'm your own personal joke compendium, your favorite little toy--"

"Oh, shut up, Karkat!"

Terezi rolls to her feet in one smooth motion, faster than Karkat can blink. She looks ready to challenge him to a deathmatch right then and there, witnesses and rituals be damned. "I am so sick of your _whiny little bullshit._ You talk and talk and talk, but the only person you’re trying to convince is yourself! You’re nothing but an insecure wiggler hiding behind his big words.”

“Oh, fuck you—”

But she’s not facing him anymore; she splays her hands behind her and tilts forward, leaning into the sea. She looks cruel, like a perfect troll: strong and sharp-eyed and ruthless. He’d admired that in her, once. Now it just makes him feel sick. “So how about it? Do you believe your own silly lies?”

“You’re psychotic,” he spits, nails digging into his palms.

She laughs. The sound’s harsh, violent, like she tore it right out of the throat of a wiggler. “You don’t. You know I’m right.”

He’s down in the sand. She’s up on the rocks.

“No,” he says, “fuck you, no, you’re wrong—”

That’s when she whirls around. The wind’s blowing through her hair and her too-big clothes; she’s skin-and-bones, edges and angles, and she stands on that rock like she owns it and all the earth beneath. “I know you,” she says. She smiles.

For a moment, he wonders whether he could hate her.

He turns his gaze away from her, towards where the waves are trying to swallow the beach, and he keeps his eyes on distant things. “Well, it’s nice to know what you actually fucking think of me.”

The surf crashes against the rocks.

"Oh," she says, "is _that_ what you think?" She sounds utterly contemptuous. God, and once he'd believed--

"You've made it pretty goddamn obvious," he says, to cut off that thought. It doesn't matter, anyway. Nothing could possibly matter less.

(He remembers long nights spent scrabbling over rocky cliffsides at the behest of some bullshit kernelsprite vagaries, the whole world red and red and red, blurring together. He'd stay up for days on end, slapping himself awake until he began to worry the color would come through; when he was too exhausted to move any more, he'd sit with his back up against the rockface and type his fingers sore. There was always more to do. There was always someone else on the other end of the line.

GC: YOUR M3MOS 4R3 PR3TTY H1LAR1OUS 4ND 4LL  
GC: BUT SHOULDNT YOU B3 4SL33P   
CG: FUCK OFF, TEREZI.   
GC: W3LL SOM3ON3S SOPOR 1S ST4L3 >:/  
GC: YOU WOULD B3 4 B3TT3R L34D3R 1F YOU KN3W WH3N TO STOP YOU KNOW   
CG: FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU I AM A COMPLETELY AMAZING AND AWESOME LEADER AND YOU ARE JUST SO GODDAMN BLESSED TO HAVE ME AND DESPITE WHAT YOU ALL THINK I AM NOT COMPLETELY FUCKING INCOMPETENT.  
CG: YOU JUST DON'T APPRECIATE ALL THE SHIT I DO FOR YOU, OKAY  
GC: ...  
CG: FUCK.  
GC: H3H3H3  
GC: YOU 4R3 SO TR4NSP4R3NT K4RK4T  
GC: W4S 1T 3QU1US 4G41N >:?  
CG: FUCK  
CG: YEAH, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO POUND SOME SENSE INTO THE KING OF THE HORSE DICKS. HAPPY NOW?

She was always on the other end of the line, even though he didn't need her and had never asked her to be there. He told her to go away, and she ignored him with the same flagrant disregard for personal boundaries he'd come to expect from her.)

But it's a different day and a different universe, now. Terezi laughs again. "Oh, of course. Poor poor Karkat. The whole world's out to get you, isn't it? Everything is always someone else's fault."

He swallows back against whatever's in his throat. "What's your point, Terezi?"

"My point is--" She pushes the words through, low and controlled-- "my _point_ is that you're pathetic."

"Yeah," he says, "yeah, I think we already fucking established that."

"That's exactly what I mean!" she shouts, sending the birds squawking into the air. "You always do this, you _always_ take the easy way out, you run and run and hide and hide and I'm sick of it, Karkat--" She draws in breath, making a noise like a gasp--

\--but it isn't, he realizes abruptly; she's crying. He turns toward her at last: he can't see her expression, but she swipes her forearm across her face like she's got a vendetta against her own eyes. It's such a preposterous sight that he can't speak for a moment. "Uh," he says stupidly, "are you--"

"Leave me _alone_ , Karkat," she snarls.

( _Maybe you should try not to be so quick to dismiss the sincerity of people's emotions,_ Kanaya says, hands on her hips.)

He feels like an enormous, steaming bag of shit, probably because he is.

"Shit, shit, look--I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean--"

"You never mean." There's that same low tone in her voice, like she's struggling to keep it still. "I don't want to talk to you right now, Karkat. Go away."

He should, he knows. He should do whatever she wants; he should stop acting like an ass and leave her be. But his legs won't move. "I can't," he says.

She whips her head around--her mouth's pressed into a tight line--

"I--I'm not going to say anything," he adds, before she can open her mouth. "I'll leave you alone, if that's what you want. I just--I can't leave you here, I have to see--that you're all here, I have to know that you're okay--"

He stops and looks at her. He can't read her--he's never been able to read her--but she inhales, going up on her toes. Regarding him, he thinks. "You're scared," she says. Not like an accusation, just like it's true.

" _No,_ " he hisses, baring his teeth at her, fingers curling in--

(The door opens onto a new universe, not theirs in any sense; from here he can't see anything but the sky, endless and empty, like a troll without a face, like an empire without war--)

His eyes slide shut. "Yes." It's barely above a whisper.

"Yeah," she says, just as quiet, "me too."

He had never thought of Terezi Pyrope as someone who could be scared.

She's sitting down now, tucked up chin-on-knees against the rock. He doesn't say a word--he barely breathes--but she isn't looking at him anymore, so he comes and takes his seat on the opposite side of the rock, facing away from the sea. It's cold and a little damp there, and he's thoroughly miserable as it is, but having made his decision he doesn't really want to move.

It's a long, long time before she speaks again. "I didn't think things would be like this."

The sea's calmer now: a steady rumble, in and out like breathing. "No," he says.

(He had thought there would be twelve of them.)

He tilts his head back against the rock. It's a cloudless night tonight, and the sky filled with unfamiliar stars; he doesn't know the names of their constellations, or they don't exist yet. Either way, they aren't his stars. They aren't hers, either. The two of them are guests on this godforsaken planet, here only by the generosity of aliens.

The next time either of them speaks, the sun's already beginning to rise over the sea.


End file.
